A blog for all seasons; A blog for one; A blog for all. As the 11th most informative blog on the planet, I have a seared memory of throwing my Time 2006 Man of the Year Award over the railing at Time Warner Center.
Justice. Only Justice Shall Thou Pursue

Power issues regularly cause massive delays along the entire Northeast Corridor (NEC) and spillover delays affect the LIRR and NJ Transit services. Power problems occur all too frequently and cost commuters billions of dollars over the years in lost opportunity costs and wasted time due to the problems.

Fixing the power issues will resolve a longstanding bottleneck along the NEC and will improve the reliability of Amtrak and NJ Transit.

The next step will be to replace the Portal Bridge, which everyone concedes requires replacement, but which has lacked funding because everyone tries to tie that bridge project together with the Hudson River tunnel projects (the cancelled ARC or the proposed Gateway). The Portal Bridge replacement would further improve reliability (just yesterday trains were delayed 15-20 minutes through the morning commute due to the bridge being opened for river traffic). The replacement bridge would allow higher speed through that segment of the NEC, but it would be a far more reliable component of the NEC than at present.